Richard Wilbur Collins III, the college student who was fatally stabbed at a Maryland campus over the weekend, was a young man of deep faith devoted to serving others, his father told NBC News on Monday.
Collins, 23, a senior at Bowie State University, was killed early Saturday while visiting friends at the University of Maryland’s College Park campus. Sean Christopher Urbanski, 22, a student at the University of Maryland, is charged with first- and second-degree murder and first-degree assault in what local and federal authorities are investigating as a possible hate crime. Collins was black, and Urbanski, a member of a Facebook group called “Alt-Reich: Nation,” which featured bigoted posts, is white.
“Suffice it to say that it’s despicable,” University of Maryland Police Chief David Mitchell said Sunday. “It shows extreme bias against women, Latinos, members of the Jewish faith and especially African Americans.”
Collins’ father, Richard Collins Jr., said he’s been too consumed dealing with “the initial stage of shock” to have fully grasped yet the implications of the “horrific and senseless act.” “I really have not tried to process motive or intentions behind this yet,” Collins said. “I’m in no place to feel very many emotions beyond sadness and just [a] deep sense of personal loss.” Collins said investigators have told him that his son was killed while he was waiting for an Uber driver to pick him up along with a couple of his friends from the University of Maryland, which is in the Washington suburb of College Park.
